AC company, a long time customer of DMI found itself in a parts shortage due to their customer putting pressure on them. Most of the orders for the AC company consisted of short runs of 5 through 25 parts as a standard order size. This parts shortage was causing AC to issue far more purchase orders than usual as well as changing the schedule daily. The changing of the schedule daily was putting DMI in an impossible position of trying to play catch up to the ever-changing prod

A leader has nothing more than their credibility. If you are setting out to inspire your people, you had better mean it your people can tell when you are faking. Would you rather be seen as a fake leader who sometimes tries to lead and inspire or a credible leader who lives their convictions every day?

Projects, even for those who know better, tend to start simple then grow overly complicated. The key is to be able to recognize that project is beginning to get too complicated and scale it back to the original intent of the project.

A general cost-cutting directive from upper management without clear communication on the purpose and end game of the cost-cutting in many cases results in higher costs for the company. Without direction on the cost-cutting initiative, employees will be ruthlessly efficient at what gets cut without regard for the side effects of said cuts, especially if bonuses are handed out for the number and size of cuts. Predictably the outcome is a loss of valuable suppliers, lower quali

My goal when I do projects for companies who are farming out overload work is to #1 have a better quality product than their shop and #2 work smarter and out hustle their shop.

Does your company have a sense of shared destiny from the top on down? So many of the nonmanagement people that I have talked to over the years do not feel that they have a shared company destiny with management. They can see by management lackluster attitudes towards providing production or services the best tools with which to do their jobs and that management is disengaged from the production or services side of the company. This is compounded by management constantly harp

The following is a perfect example of why you do not fire people for mistakes. You turn the mistake into a learning moment. “Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?” – Thomas John Watson Sr., IBM

While management tends to think that are keeping secrets on the health of their company, lineworkers and staff have their communication channels to the company scuttlebutt. The moral of the story is for management to keep it honest and above board. In cases where management through diversion has been able to hide the health of the company and then announces a surprise layoff etc. they become the emperor who has no clothes underscoring the need to keep it honest and above boar

Whole Foods management has lost it's ever-loving mind. The reason for Whole Foods existence is to keep its shelves stocked with foodstuffs. The customer could care less how efficiently those food items reach the shelves, and they have an expectation that when they enter the store, the food item as advertised by Whole Foods is on the shelf. Management of the company has disregarded practically every common-sense management tool made available to them to reach this cost-cutting

The use of data is a double-edged sword. Not enough data can lead to poor decision making, too much data can bring a company to a stand still, unable to make the decisions necessary to move forward. Just how much detail do you need to make a decision? Data being evaluated separately from the everyday functions of a company that it affects is useless. Many times data is cherry-picked to prove that the decisions made by management are the correct decisions. Using data